Flasher by Ruth Panofsky

Poem title: Flasher Poet name: Ruth Panofsky Poem begins: In winter I travel tunnels through campus avoid snow drifts and blistering cold safe in the underground alleyways of undergraduate life I trust this subterranean world more than I do the upper reaches of ice-bound pathways here I move easily from class to class to Roosters where coffee is cheap the library where I find quiet in books on dim mornings I glimpse possibility in the flasher who tests these tunnels with me watch for him and laugh in naked joy End of Poem. Credits: Copyright © Ruth Panofsky Ruth Panofsky is the author of three books of poetry: Lifeline (Guernica, 2001), which was awarded an Ontario Arts Council Writer’s Reserve Grant; Laike and Nahum: A Poem in Two Voices (Inanna, 2007), which won the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award; and Radiant Shards: Hoda’s North End Poems (Inanna, 2020), which won a Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Award. Her poems and essays have appeared in various journals, including Dalhousie Review, Descant, the Literary Review of Canada, and White Wall Review. Originally from Montreal, she now lives and writes in Toronto and teaches Canadian Literature at Ryerson University.